THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
PAPHNUTIUS : The name of several men prominent in the early Christian Church. (1) Bishop of a city in the upper Thebaid. He was a distinguished member of the first ecumenical council at Nicaa in 325, where, although he was himself a celibate, he protested against the proposed prohibition of clerical marriages, and succeeded in maintaining a status quo by which the bishops, priests, and deacons were permitted to live with wives they had married while still laymen. He also attended the Synod of Tyre in 335, where he opposed the majority in his unsuccessful plea for Athanasius. During the persecution of Maximinus, one of his eyes was put out, the left knee-tendon was severed, and he was condemned to labor in the mines. According to Sozomen, he was able to heal the sick and exorcise demons. The date of his death is unknown; he was venerated as confessor and martyr. (2) Abbot in the Scetic desert. At the age of ninety, he was visited by Cassian. He lived a life of meditation, leaving his cell only on Saturday and Sunday to attend church five Roman miles distant, and to replenish his water-supply. His humility and selfdenial led Cassian to make him the spokesman in the third collation, De tribus abrenuntiationibus. When in 399, Theophilus, bishop of Alexandria, opposed anthropomorphic concepts of God, Paphnutius was the only priest who dared to read his letter publicly.
Other men named Paphnutius are enumerated by Rosweyd (MPL, xxi. 435 sqq.) and a Paphnutius also composed the Vita Omphrii {MPL, lxxiii. 211).
(G. Grutzmacher.)
Bibliography : F. Piper, Lives of the Leaders of our Church Universal, pp. 57-59, Philadelphia, 1879; Schaff, Christian Church, ii. 244, 626; DCB, iv. 184-185.
PAPIAS, pe'pi-as.
Work of Papias (§ 1).
Argument Concerning Presbyter John (§ 2).
Contents of the Work (§3).
Papias' Method and Testimony (§ 4)
Later Critics and the Fourth Gospel (§ 5).
Other Fragments of Papias (§6).
Characterization (§ 7).
Misdating of Papias by Irenseus (§8).
Testimony of the De Boor Fragments (§9).
The Apostles and Elders of Papias (§ 10).
The Elder John (§ 11).
Content of the Traditions (§ 12).
Papias, according to the common understanding a disciple of John the Apostle, and bishop of Hierapolis in Phrygia, was born probably between 50 and 60 a.d.; d. a martyr, a little after the middle of the second century. He occupies a place of special interest in the history of the Church on account of the " Exposition of the Words of Jesus "
in five books, which was extant in
i. Work manuscript as late as 1218, but has
of Papias. entirely disappeared. A few of the
fragments have come down through Irenseus and Eusebius, and others, more or less spurious, through later ecclesiastical writers; and though of extraordinary interest, yet are they so problematical and obscure that it is impossible to derive safe conclusions from them. Two fragments have occasioned most discussion: one from the preface and the other from some unknown place in the work. In the preface, Papias writes:
" But I shall not hesitate also to include with the interpretations whatsoever things I have at any time well learned from the presbyteroi and well remembered, giving assurance of their truth. For I did not, like the multitude, take pleasure in those who speak much, but in those who speak the truth; not in those who relate strange commandments but in those who deliver the commandments given by the Lord unto faith and springing from the truth itself. If, then, any one came, who had been a follower of the presbyteroi, I questioned him with regard to the words of the presbyteroi; what Andrew or what Peter said (eipon), or what Philip or Thomas or James or John or Matthew or any other of the disciples of the Lord, and what Aristion, and the presbyteros John, the disciples of the Lord say (legousi). For I assumed beforehand that what was to be gotten from books would not profit me as much as what came from the living and abiding voice."
The entire problem revolves about the term presbyteroi. It is seen that the name John is used twice. Are both names of one and the same person? Irenffius states (Hair., V., xxxiii. 4; Eng.
transl., ANF, i. 563) that Papias was
2. Argument a hearer of John and a companion of
Concerning Polycarp. Immediately after citing
Presbyter this, Eusebius (Hist, eccl., III., xxxix.
John. i.; Eng. transl., NPNF, 2 ser., i. 170)
asserts that the words of Papias in the preface by no means imply that he was a hearer and an eye-witness of the Apostles but that he heard the doctrines from those who were their friends. Eusebius made the first known effort to determine the presbyter John to be not the apostle but another. Later opponents allege that Eusebius had need to create the presbyter John in order to ascribe to him the authorship of the Apocalypse, because his repugnancy to the literalness with which Papias interpreted it made Eusebius unwilling to admit the Apostle John as the author who instructed Papias. (It may be added, here, that Eusebius ardently defends the authenticity of the Fourth Gospel; ut sup., xxiv.) Efforts have been made to emend the text, especially by those who would break the chain that supports the authenticity of the Fourth Gospel. Renan would read, in the last instance, instead of " disciples of the Lord," " disciples of disciples of the Lord "; Bacon, " disciples of these "; while Mommsen would regard the phrase as an interpolation. There seem to be two interpretations of the term presbyteroi. According to one it refers to a distinct office of elders in the early congregations. On the other hand, the term is referred to a limited class of persons, of the first traditional rank after Christ, included with the apostles as his disciples; according to Rothe, men identified with the birth of Christianity and regarded with veneration by the following generation; the first class being a crystallization of the second, following the first plastic period. In the sense of the second class presbyteroi is to be rendered " Apostolic Fathers." Were the presbyteroi of Papias these or the former? It has been suggested by Stilting that presbyteros with John at the end of the fragment can signify nothing else than what presbyteroi, which precedes three times, signifies. However, if the others were of the first traditional rank after Christ, then John presbyter was likewise of the same, and was therefore John the Apostle. So also Aristion. If, however, the name presbyteroi was a fixed term, applying to a definite class of men in